Five and a half half-racks: The Bottle Bill doesn’t work

8/12/14

Before I even pulled up to the farmer’s driveway and turned around to park in front of White Rock (a popular fishing and recreation spot on Lower River Road, across the river from Schroeder boat landing) I saw the boxes of bottles: 5 half-racks and a 6-pack.  Someone had been feeling civic-minded enough to gather their bottles and set them on the side of the road for some desperate person to pick up and feed into machines for $3.80.  Being bottles, no one on a bicycle would be able to carry them, so that desperate person would have to be driving a car.

Instead, I picked them up and stuck them in my truck.  Before I left, I remembered the need for a photo and recreated the scene.  Between those two times, I cleaned the rest of both sides of the road along the site, and then filled several grocery bags with bottles and cans scattered among the rocks and sand, along with a couple 5-gallon buckets of regular trash. 

At home, I ended up filling 2 half-full metal trash cans with the bottles and cans, which filled up our 3 cans devoted to returnables, mostly beer containers.  It is not unusual to find a half-rack stash of cans when cleaning along the river below the wastewater treatment plant; I found one such stash the next day.  Sometimes they are easy to get to.  Other times, I have to reach deep into the blackberries with my grabber to get them all.

I am finding so many that Donnie is starting to wonder if it is worth the time and hassle of hauling them to a store and putting them in the machines.  Obviously, I give them to him because it is not worth the hassle for me.

Before the machines, the bottle bill kind of worked.  Now, it does not work at all for its stated purpose, which is to reduce litter. 

It is not worth the trouble for most people to haul them to the stores and put them in those very annoying machines.  But many people think that it is some kind of charity to leave them on the ground for other people to find.  Some don’t like to put them in trash cans, lest the money be lost.  One time, I found a kitchen trash bag full of cans at the back entrance to Burger King at Fruitdale where they had not been a few minutes earlier.  It seems that someone saw me picking up litter there and decided to be generous with their returnables and save themselves the hassle.

Those who actively look for returnables go rooting through trash cans for them, and they are not necessarily neat about it; they often leave the lids off the cans.  I have to write “Trash only” on my yellow litter bags that the city allows me to leave next to their trash cans in our parks for pickup, because someone was dumping them in the trash cans and searching for returnables, filling the can and making it useless for others.

On the other hand, when I was on Work Crew and was cleaning up the string of camps along the Parkway, we found a pile of quart beer bottles in a camp, along with separate piles of food trash.  These vagrants were apparently stealing or begging for what they needed, and could not be bothered with those heavy bottles for a nickel apiece.

The people who left those boxes of bottles probably gathered the rest of their trash as they generated it, just like their bottles, and took the trash away.  But since they could not be bothered with feeding the bottles into machines in a nasty, stinky room for nickel apiece, they left them for someone else to take away, probably feeling really charitable and civic-minded doing so.

If there was not a Bottle Bill in Oregon, they probably would have taken their bottles with them, and hauled them to the recycler for free.

The Prospector Returns

Thursday, February 27, 2014

I work at The Rocks (ODFW property across the Rogue River from Schroeder Park boat landing) on Thursdays now, before I work on my own house and yard with my daughter.  This Thursday, I forgot my new signs for the top of my truck, or I would have parked it on the road near the trash wood pile I was thinking of removing.  Instead, I parked down inside, as I usually do, turning around for an easy exit.  The space is small, and if someone else drives in, getting out can be tricky.

  

There was relatively little litter in the parking area.  Walking out onto the top rocks, it was quickly apparent that our prospector had returned, and had done much of his work where it won’t be washed away by anything but hard rain.  Holes, sand, and clumps of grass are strewn around the area where a couple of kids and their dad like to run their remote control trucks.  

I may have to get busy with shovel, broom, and blowers to restore some natural order to the area that can be healed by rain.  Maybe it will give the fellow a clue that his work is not welcome on that property.

It’s one thing to go digging holes where few people go.  But a place with a well-used parking spot, a place which is obviously well used for fishing, swimming, and playing on big, smooth, pretty rocks, is not the place to be prospecting.  And even in less used places, one must put the dirt back in the holes when one is done, not leave it strewn all over the bedrocks. 

He’d spread his share of litter, too, maybe all of it.  It included a pick-mattock with a broken corner on the mattock, and a piece of its handle, separate.

ODFW could post the place against mining and install some cameras around the parking area.  It would be easy to distinguish the miner.  Such posting would also discourage camping, supplementing the effect of regular litter cleaning.

I stopped at the upstream parking area to pick up that pile of wood trash, but after picking up along the road, it was time to meet my sister, who was visiting from out of town.  I also discovered some pallets at the bottom of the pile as I started to pick up branches from the top.  Too much work and too little time; I’ll try to get it next time.

The Rogue cleaned The Rocks

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Thursday morning is now my time to go to The Rocks with Petey and pick up litter.  The water got high during the recent storms, and had gone back down a lot, but not enough to easily walk onto the peninsula. 

There was very little trash in the inner parking area; the weather hadn’t been nice enough for many visitors.  The high water had cleaned up most signs of prospecting, filling holes in with sand and rocks.  There were still some sandy clumps of weeds lying on the rocks, and the big round hole had stayed well above all the water, open and ugly.  But the big brush pile down by the river was spread out and looks like it belongs now.

 The river moved major rocks into the biggest hole

The brush pile is not so obviously piled now.  I picked out that blue flip-flop.

The river filled this excavated crack; the rain gullied it.

But the round hole and the dirt thrown out of it stayed above water.

Since the city had given me nice strong yellow trash bags, I decided to clean up the trash from the brush pile in the east parking area up by the road.  It ended up taking two bags, starting with the vacuum cleaner that had been left in the brush pile and started the trash accumulation over a year ago in the fall.  There also were some fiberglass-covered chip boards that were heavy enough for the second bag, and a bunch of miscellaneous trash. 

I dropped off the bags by the dumpster in the Reinhart Volunteer Park (AKA All Sport Park) by the Maintenance office dumpster, as they were heavy.  I figure I’ll get the source of all the trouble, the brush pile, next week.

Signs of Prospecting at The Rocks

February 1-2, 2014

Saturday is the day for Greenwood dog park weeding class, from 9:00-10:00 at this season, as well as picking up litter along my dog-walking route at first light.  As I walked along the route in my vest without Petey, I quickly realized that it would take at least two walks to pick up the route thoroughly, going my normal direction one day, and working the opposite side of the street the next. 

I ended up doing the other part of the route on Monday, because I had to be at the Schroeder Dog Park at 9:00 AM for Sunday weeding class, and I took Petey to The Rocks, across the river from Schroeder boat landing, first.  It’s a popular, though unofficial, fishing and recreation spot that farmer Kudlac signed over to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife a few years ago.  ODFW tried to block the entrance, but the log was pushed out of the way, and a new trail was pushed through the blackberries for emphasis.  

I’ve been bringing Petey there and cleaning the litter out of it most Sundays for the last 4 years.  I occasionally report major dumping to the county or state; there was a pickup load dumped in the middle of the place last year, and a couch in early January.

This Sunday, I saw much sign of someone digging for gold among the Rocks: big holes and small on the downstream side of boulders; cleaning out the cracks between the granite bedrocks; and one big, round hole.  He left the dirt scattered and piled everywhere, ignorant of the rules for mining or care for other users.  I took photos and sent an e-mail to ODFW this morning.  

He dug down a good foot here. 

 A relatively small hole.

This hole is about 3 feet wide and deep.

 A dug-out trail.

 A view of the devastation down the hill; round hole on left, dirt thrown center.